Governance audit released by city

The third-party governance audit requested by Lloydminster city council was released to the public on Thursday. File Photo

Mistrust between city council and administration were the bulk of the findings resulting from a governance audit of city hall, which was released to the public on Thursday.

The audit was conducted by George B Cuff & Associates Ltd., between March 6-24. Within the 110-page audit, it was noted the current situation inside city hall “is not healthy nor is it stable.”

“There is considerable mistrust between council and management,” it read. A theme brought up continuously throughout the –what can only be called – scathing report.

“City administration has a job to do, as does city council,” Mayor Gerald Aalbers said in an interview with media Thursday.

“I think one of the challenges … we’ve changed the direction from four mayors in 10 years, we’ve had three, in essence, city councils in 10 years. So, administration can sometimes see things in a way, and all of a sudden a change of council again,” the mayor said.

While conducting the audit and prior to onsite interviews, an anonymous survey was distributed to members of council and senior management.

A summary of council’s perspective from the survey included comments such as, “very weak management structure,” hinting at a “hidden agenda administration” and “rumours of secret agreements.”

Survey results from management and the senior leadership team’s (SLT) perspective contained comments such as: “council has come into this term with an agenda,” they expressed “a lack of respect or contempt for administration” and that “council is trying hard to be transparent, but in doing so, their decision making is either slow or too focused on administration.”

“If someone wants to ask if there’s an agenda? There is no agenda. We are approaching this and moving forward,” said Aalbers.

Another comment brought up multiple times was a concern with the Lloydminster Economic Development Committee (LEDC), and the decision around the move to bring the once arm-length institution in-house.

In one survey comment, it noted: “There have been numerous administration reports coming to council which have been selective in the information presented to them (case in point the LEDC dissolution where we were misled into approving something that was not what we thought).”

The concern of job security was also called upon a number of times, chalking up this fear to rhetoric during the election of fixing city hall, and those elected hinting towards a desire to come in to clean house.
“City council is not here to clean house,” said Aalbers. “What we are here to do is ensure that the direction we have been given by the voters, (and) to ensure city services are delivered in a quarterly, budget-based fashion.”

Cuff noted in the audit “hoping for constructive change will not bring about the improvements that this council desires.”

He gave 16 recommendations in the audit, and topping the recommendation list was a call to authorize an in-depth audit of the city’s actions and decisions from 2010-17,

Following were directives to make the chief administrative officer ensure all reports to council are fully vetted, for the council to adopt a “Agendas Committee” system, and that council adopt in principle the governance model system (GPC).

“They are only recommendations, but at the end of the day, your council will debate them, discuss them, and at the end of the day working with administration, there will be some implementation. How soon and how fast? That’s to be determined by council in due process,” said Aalbers.

The audit will be in brought forward in the agenda at Monday’s city council meeting.

“We aren’t going to run out and implement all (16) recommendations, nor we may only do one or two … there’s going to be recommendations in there that are not going to be able to be implemented in one day. So, let’s try to determine a course of action and work towards it,” said Aalbers.

The full report can be found online starting at page 23 of the April 10 agenda report.

“I hope if anything we are going to be able to improve communication to a much better level than it was six months or a year ago,” said Aalbers. “That people have that ability to openly and feel comfortable at any level to reach out to people and ensure that sense is there.”

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